Violent and self-harming young people are a challenge to clinicians, front-line care workers, teachers and carers. They evoke very strong feelings and responses in those attempting to engage and care for them. Finding an elusive benign stance, which is neither punitive nor placatory, is a challenge that individuals, networks and organisations often face.

Ariel Nathanson is a Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist with many years of experience of clinically working with highly disturbed and harmful young people both within the NHS and in private practice. He regularly consults to residential care organisations that offer placement and care for these difficult young people and to organisations and individuals who work with gangs and in prisons.

Non Violent Resistance (NVR) was originally developed by Haim Omer and his team at the University of Tel Aviv as It helps parents, schools and communities respond more effectively to such problems as child to parent violence, young people at risk of sexual or criminal exploitation, drug misuse, self-harm, anxiety disorders in which the young person does not cooperate in treatment, or the ‘entitled dependency’ of younger adults who become socially withdrawn. Deriving its methods from the principles of raising parental presence, de-escalation and reconciliation, NVR promotes constructive resistance to harmful behaviour, while seeking to support adults in reconnecting with their child and developing a non-punitive yet strong and emotionally containing parental position.

By supporting adults to act in reconciliatory ways towards the young person, whilst at the same time helping them to develop an effective network of adult supporters, NVR is a relational approach, which integrates systemic and attachment-orientated perspectives. By working with and through the adults, we can help young people overcome serious behavioural problems, even and especially when they themselves do not cooperate in the therapeutic process.

Peter Jakob has introduced NVR to the UK and developed specific ways of working with trauma and attachment difficulties in NVR. This brief one day workshop will give an insight into the underlying principles and philosophy of NVR and introduce some of its core methods. It will also illustrate the specific child-focussed and trauma-focussed ways of working with NVR. Participants will receive information on the rapidly growing evidence base for NVR, and the many new applications of the approach.

Methods

We use PowerPoint presentation, video clips, role play, small group exercises and discussion to create a lively experiential learning environment for this first introduction to the principles and methods of NVR.

This interactive workshop provides participants with an opportunity to develop their understanding of working with goals in counselling and psychotherapy, and to develop their skills in this emerging area. Although many therapists are reluctant to focus on goals, they provide an opportunity to help clients define, for themselves, what is important to therapy; and evidence suggests that many clients do want to develop them as an orientating-point for therapy. The workshop starts by examining the 'teleological' philosophical principles underlying a goal-orientated approach to therapy--that human beings are 'directional', striving towards things--and goes on to examine what has been learnt from the psychological research about the nature of goals and goal processes (for instance, distinguishing between 'approach' and 'avoidance' goals). It then goes on to a more practical exploration of working with goals, including skills practice and video demonstration.

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